Cognitive radio trial environment: First live authorized shared access-based spectrum-sharing demonstration

Cognitive radio system (CRS) technology can help to respond to the growing mobile traffic demand by improving network resource usage and gaining access to new shared spectrum bands. This paper presents a cognitive radio trial environment consisting of cognitive engines (CEs) to control different radio systems (e.g. LTE and WARP platform based networks). Load balancing and authorised shared access (ASA) are demonstrated using the trial environment with promising results. The ASA based spectrum sharing trial is presented for the first time in the world with a real life mobile network accessing a shared spectrum band under licensed shared access regime. Cognitive decision making brings intelligence to the usage of the radio and network resources, and, at best, increases considerably end user's QoS compared to the standard systems as shown for QoS-based offloading.